On this page we will try to explain how to resolve problems when viewing the Malayalam pages. Malayalam Wikipedia uses Unicode to encode its pages. If you do not see Malayalam letters at all you may need a Malayalam Unicode Font, sections below explain the best options for various platforms.

If you have Windows XP with the SP2 update, you already have a working system. The Kartika font which comes with the SP2 update is a decent font. But you need to install any Unicode 5.1 compliant fonts to see new chillus. (See the section Managing Chillu Charaters for more details).

The most likely reason why you cannot see anything on the Malayalam Wikipedia is that you do not have a font that supports the Malayalam Unicode range. If you can see some letters, but there are too many errors, you probably have a font with poor support for Malayalam Unicode. Perhaps the best fonts available are rachana by K.H.Hussain Anjali Oldlipi by kevinThoolikaTraditional Unicode font. They work almost perfectly in Windows 95/98, ME, 2000, and XP (especially with Internet Explorer 5 or over). Please download the fonts by following the above links and install them. To install, copy the fonts, open "Fonts" from Control Panel and paste the fonts in the Fonts directory.

If you were able to see some letters, you will need to change the font Internet Explorer uses for showing Malayalam Unicode. To do this pull down Tools from the menubar in Internet Explorer and follow Internet Options..., click on Fonts (button). Choose Malayalam in Language script first, and choose a Unicode font (AnjaliOldLipi, Thoolika, Rachana etc) in the Web page font box. Restart Internet Explorer if it doesn't work the first time around.

You may need to turn on "Indic" support in Windows 2000. To do this, go to Control Panel in your computer, double click on Regional Options. In General Tab, language settings for the system, check the Indic box and click OK. You may need to restart the machine after doing this. In Windows XP, go to Control Panel in your computer, double click Regional and Language Options, select Languages Tab, under supplemental language support, check the box to install files for complex script and click OK. In case you are still not able to see Malayalam letters properly in Mozilla, you should select the font Mozilla uses for Unicode by opening from Mozilla's menu bar Edit->Preferences->Appearance->Fonts. Choose "Fonts for:" as Unicode and all typefaces as Rachana_w01 or ThoolikaUnicode.

AnjaliOldlipi works excellent on Firefox. To use it as default font to display Malayalam and Other Languages [from Tools menu > Options item > Content tab > Fonts & Colors section > Advanced button > Select "Malayalam" and set Anjali as font for serif/san-serif/monospace, do the same for Other Languages also.

Default Karthika font available in windows for Malayalam is not able to handle Atomic Chillu Characters defined in Unicode 5.1.0. But current version of popular AnjaliOldlipi supports atomic chillus. If you are reluctant to use fonts which are encoded with atomic chillus, and using Firefox or Google Chrome, install fix-ml firefox add-on or Fix-ml chrome extension respectively to convert newly defined Chillaksharams to old fashion.

Users of Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 should have difficulty in viewing atomic chillus in their edit box, titlebar etc. even after installing and configuring a newer Unicode 5.1 compatible Malayalam font. Uninstalling Kartika.ttf font and configuring the user interface elements (such as Window title, icon etc) to use any Unicode 5.1 compatible font (such as Anjali/Rachana) through Display properties in control panel will fix this problem. Use Controlpanel->Display->Appearance->Advanced option for this configuration. Snapshot of this configuration is given here. A snapshot of wikipedia editor after this configuration can be seen here. In the image Malayalam character ൽ in mangal pandey is atomic.

Malayalam Fonts are available here. For installing fonts open your font folder (For Fedora open your file browser, type fonts:/// hit enter; For Ubuntu open your file browser type /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ hit enter) and paste fonts in that folder. Restart any application that may need to use them. Your browser may need to set appropriate font (Font Rachana works fine, anyway check this page for finding appropriate font for you). Font setting for Firefox browser is available at Edit->Preference->Content->Advanced.

If you are using Chromium browser (or Google chrome), sometimes you may find some minor display errors such as overlapping words or different sized words. You can fix this easily by setting a particular font (Preferably Rachana) explicitly for web content. For this, go to Settings (Click spanner icon on your toolbar), and select preferences. On the current window click "Under the hood" tab, and click the button "change font and language settings" in "Web content" subtitle.

Even though new versions of Linux distributions are working fine with Malayalam; default fonts bundled with them are not supporting Atomic Chillu Characters defined in Unicode 5.1.0. This Modified version of Font Rachana renders newly defined atomic Chillaksharams. You can also use these fonts which has Atomic chillus. If you are reluctant to use fonts which are encoded with atomic chills, use this firefox add-on for firefox browser or this Chrome extension for Google chrome (or for chromium browser) to convert newly defined Chillaksharams to old fashion.